Four internationalization models for Chinese technology companies

According to Bloomberg, Alibaba is preparing to invest in Snapchat, the American social app that lets users send and receive messages that disappear after they are read. This is not the first time that Snapchat has been rumored to have an ambiguous relationship with a Chinese company. Last year, there were many rumors that Tencent had invested in Snapchat, and later, leaked emails from Sony also showed that Tencent and Snapchat have a special relationship.

Interestingly, in China, Tencent-backed Didi Dache and Alibaba-backed Kuaidi Dache have just merged. But now the two companies have moved the competition to the international stage. You know, in addition to Tencent and Alibaba, Snapchat is also a target of Facebook.

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It probably doesn’t need to be proven that Tencent and Alibaba are no longer just Chinese Internet giants. Although their main business is still in China, they are also increasing their international market through various means. Tencent already has a certain influence in Southeast Asia, and Alibaba itself has international trade, but now they are trying to enter the United States, a market that is generally believed to be several years ahead of China in the technology industry.

To sum it up simply, the way Tencent and Alibaba entered the US market had a bit of a nouveau riche vibe, as it was mainly through investment or acquisition.

While Tencent and Alibaba are busy investing in American Internet companies, Baidu, another company in BAT, is also not idle. Last year, Baidu established a research and development center in North America and invited Andrew Ng, the founder of online education company Coursera, to take charge.

However, Baidu has recently encountered some troubles in the South American market. Baidu's Android application management tool Du Speed ​​Booster was removed from Google Play in the Brazilian market. According to an answer by Wang Alex on Zhihu, Baidu's series of products, including hao123, have caused dissatisfaction among many users in Brazil. One of the important reasons is that Baidu's products are difficult to uninstall after installation. It can be said that Baidu's way of entering Brazil has some "rogue" colors that may be unique to Chinese companies.

It is worth noting that Du Speed ​​Booster was removed from the shelves because it listed PSafe, a product acquired by 360 locally, as a virus application. As a result, it was sued by PSafe and eventually removed from the shelves. Tencent and Alibaba are fighting an investment and acquisition war in the United States, while Baidu and 360 are fighting a product war in Brazil, and the scene is not very good.

However, there are also successful examples in China of internationalizing products. For example, UC Browser has been successful in India and Southeast Asia. In recent years, Go Launcher under 3G Portal and Clean Master under Cheetah have successfully entered the US market.

Recently, Cheetah Mobile CEO Fu Sheng gave a speech at Stanford University, in which he also talked about Cheetah Mobile's internationalization. One very interesting point is that he believes that tool products are the easiest to internationalize because everyone's usage habits are similar. Du Speed ​​Booster, Go Launcher and Clean Master are all tool products.

In terms of internationalization strategy, Fu Sheng said that they pay close attention to the comments of users on Google Play. They will pay attention to every negative review and try to contact the person who gave the negative review to understand the problem. For American companies, it is almost impossible to have a dedicated person to pay attention to every negative review. Cheetah Mobile's model is a "human sea war", using more manpower to do everything to the best, which has a strong Chinese characteristic. Clean Master has accumulated more than 20 million reviews on Google Play, with an average score of 4.7.

Moreover, Cheetah's Chinese-style "human wave tactics" is not only applied to comments, but also to products and marketing. For tool-type products, human wave tactics are also effective, after all, more people make it easier to optimize the details of the product. However, this model is not applicable to product models that require more creativity and ideas.

Of course, no matter which method is used for internationalization, localization is the most basic step. Most of the companies mentioned above have offices in North America, but most of them do not directly make products. If we consider localized product development, Momo is the one that has done the most thorough internationalization. Momo has developed a new product, Blupe, specifically for the US market, and it is mainly developed by a US team recruited locally. After releasing an immature version, Momo recently released a new version of Blupe and officially began to promote this product.

There are two companies we cannot ignore, Xiaomi and OnePlus. Xiaomi's current internationalization is mostly limited to Southeast Asia - internationalization here refers to product sales, but the company is already very well-known in the US technology community, partly due to its rapid development and partly due to the joining of Google executive Hugo Barra. OnePlus's situation is similar to Xiaomi. Although its product sales in the United States are average, it has also gained a high degree of popularity in the technology community.

In the United States, both Xiaomi and OnePlus have a marketing-first approach, first establishing brand awareness and then using the brand to drive future product sales.

Regardless of the model, the internationalization trend of Chinese technology companies has become increasingly obvious. In the future competition in the international market, Chinese Internet companies may also maintain their own characteristics, which may also become the key for them to stand out in the international market.